Moonlighting (TV Series 1985–1989) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The quirky cases of a former model and a smart aleck detective who manage a private detective agency. Creator: A student starts to watch Moonlighting, then his mother appears and reminds he has to read Taming of the Shrew for school. As he starts to read, the characters from Moonlighting enact the play. 8.3 The battle between Sam and David continues and became serious when Sam proposed to Maddie. She is non-committal with her answer but it forces David to think about how he feels about Maddie. Sam and ... 8.3 When David and Maddie meet the owner of a club who tells them about an unresolved murder. Maddie and David argue about who they think the real murderer is and, in their dreams, set about solving the ...

8.3 Take the quiz Related News a list of 25 titles created 06 Oct 2010 a list of 35 titles created 19 Mar 2012 a list of 41 titles created 25 Jun 2012 a list of 45 titles created 10 Apr 2013 a list of 36 titles created 23 Aug 2013 Search for " Moonlighting " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 3 Golden Globes. Another 15 wins & 60 nominations. See more awards » Photos Resplendent with authentic 1980's music, fashion and vibe, "Miami Vice" follows two undercover detectives and their extended team through the mean streets of Miami. Stars: Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas, Saundra Santiago The adventures of a Hawaii based private investigator. Stars: Tom Selleck, John Hillerman, Roger E. Mosley The cases of a female private detective partnered with a former thief who assumes the role of a fictitious detective in the business.

Stars: Stephanie Zimbalist, Pierce Brosnan, Doris Roberts A lone crimefighter battles the forces of evil with the help of an indestructible and artificially intelligent supercar. Stars: David Hasselhoff, Edward Mulhare, Richard Basehart Four Vietnam vets, framed for a crime they didn't commit, help the innocent while on the run from the military. Stars: George Peppard, Mr. T, Dwight Schultz The adventures of three sexy female private eyes. Stars: Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith After a crippled test pilot is rebuilt with nuclear powered limbs and implants, he serves as a unique intelligence agent. Stars: Lee Majors, Richard Anderson, Martin E. Brooks The lives and work of the staff of an inner city police precinct. Stars: Daniel J. Travanti, Michael Warren, Bruce Weitz The adventures of a secret agent armed with almost infinite scientific resourcefulness. Stars: Richard Dean Anderson, Dana Elcar, Bruce McGill The adventures of the fast-drivin', rubber-burnin' Duke boys of Hazzard County.

Stars: Tom Wopat, John Schneider, Catherine Bach Accounts of visitors to a unique resort island in the Pacific Ocean that can fulfill literally any fantasy requested, but rarely turn out as expected. Stars: Ricardo Montalban, Hervé Villechaize, Christopher Hewett As part of a deal with an intelligence agency to look for his missing brother, a renegade pilot goes on missions with an advanced battle helicopter. Stars: Jan-Michael Vincent, Alex Cord, Ernest Borgnine Edit Storyline The top model Maddie Hayes was betrayed by her investment adviser who flew with all her money to South-America and began the hard life of a Casino owner. All the unfaithful manager has left Maddie is her house, her unbelievable beauty and intelligence and the run-down detective-agency "City Angels" (renamed by Maddie into "Blue Moon"). Because of her lack of money, she wants to sell the agency, but the houses only detective David Addison tries to convince her to join the agency as the new boss.

So Maddie Hayes becomes involved in the work of a real private detective, which means so hard work as to spy upon unfaithful husbands, find missing people or murderers, foil attempts on VIP's lives, stop killers, help lovers and by the way save the world's peace and existence. While doing this Maddie and David try to get used to each other and this way they recognize their complete difference in life-style, humour, amusement and of course in the way how to run a detective agency. Maybe this is ... Written by Adrian Schuster & Oliver Philipp <adrians@zedat.fu-berlin.de> 3 March 1985 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Das Model und der Schnüffler See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Bruce Willis made the film Die Hard (1988) while starring in this show. By the time the series ended, "Die Hard" was available on VHS. In one of the last "Moonlighting" episodes, Willis and a love interest walk past a video rental store while an employee tears a "Die Hard" poster down from the window. See more » Quotes David Addison : Excuse me?

Maddie Hayes : An idea. You know, an original thought. You've heard of them. Anyway, I was just lying in my bed last night, just lying there, feeling terrible about telling that poor man that he couldn't write Mrs. Woodley anymore, when suddenly, BA-BING! I get this idea... Maddie Hayes : Huh? David Addison : Ba-what? I thought I just heard you say ba-bing. Maddie Hayes : Ba-bing? So what if I did say ba-bing? So what? Anyway, David, I suddenly realized - why are you looking at me like that? Maddie Hayes : Why are you looking at ... [...] See more » Crazy Credits Between the closing credits of episode 3.9, "The Straight Poop", about 5 minutes of bloopers from previous episodes are shown. See more » Connections If you agree that"birds bird and bees bee" you'll love this!

15 February 2001 | by Shapster11 – See all my reviews In the finest tradition of Gable&Lombard and Tracey&Hepburn, Cybil Sheppard and Bruce Willis bring drama, comedy, and wit to TV together with a sexual tension that underscores their partnership in the Blue Moon Detective Agency. Shepard, who plays Maddie Hayes, wakes up one morning to find out her accountant has absconded with the fortune she made as a high fashion model. Obviously it was not a stretch for Cybil to adapt to this role! In the course of finding out that she needs to sell everything, she happens in on this little detective agency(Blue Moon), she owns only because it was a great tax writeoff. The staff is morabund, and the head sleuth is a wise cracking obnoxious male chauvenist named David Addison, played by an unknown(at the time) Bruce Willis. The immediate rapport between the two brought viewers back for more. The endless stream of double entendre's, malaprops, and overall office antics made the show lovable and audiences craved for more.

Glenn Gordon Caron's writing and vision had the writers, actors, and directors take license with certain rules in primetime that were never questioned. E.G. In one particular episode Maddie asks David to get more explicit with an explanation and David responds by telling her if they get any more explicit they'll have to move the show to cable. It is precisely these departures from the norm, along with the genius idea to have the two main characters talk to each other AT THE SAME TIME, that made critics and fans follow their every move. It's probably best to say that this show's run was cut short due to the emergence of Willis as a bonafide star. Once he made his mark on the big screen, in Die Hard, Bruce was looking for ways to exit TV. In interviews he talked of the brutal schedules for TV primetime and the difficulty in exploring the boundaries of his talents and appetite for acting. As the show fragmented the practice of in season repeat episodes was probably accepted more , if not born out of necessity. Expanded roles were given in onscreen time and plots to Allyce Beasley(who played a great Agnes DiPesto) and her Blue Moon boyfriend Herbert Viola, played by Curtis Armstrong.

These shows were often almost difficult to watch, through no fault of Beasley and Armstrong, but rather the desire to see Maddie and David cavort as usual. Reruns have been syndicated and you can find them sometimes, most recently on cable channel BRAVO. If you do see the shows, and they are regularly scheduled, it would be well worth it to look for four of my favorites...the first episode of Moonlighting's second season entitled "Brother Can You Spare A Blond", a later episode when Maddie and David have had one of their innumerable fights and they are both interviewed by Rona Barrett in an attempt to reconcile their differences, the episode that co-stars Dana Delaney as the ex-fiance that jilted David, and a classic show guest hosted by Orson Welles shot just before Welles' death. The show signifies the great love/hate relationship between the two main characters and is brilliantly shot in both color and black and white. I think you'll get the spirit and essence of this show if you see any of these. 33 of 41 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Moonlighting (TV series) Moonlighting (TV series) Cybill ShepherdBruce WillisAllyce BeasleyCurtis Armstrong (1986–89) Theme music composer "Moonlighting" Performed by Al Jarreau Country of origin approx. 42–44 minutes per episode Production company(s) Picturemaker Productions, in association with ABC Circle Films Original channel Edit Block no caption Moonlighting is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 3, 1985, to May 14, 1989. The network aired a total of 66 episodes (67 in syndication as the pilot is split into two episodes). Starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives, the show was a mixture of drama, comedy and romance, and was considered to be one of the first successful and influential examples of comedy-drama, or "dramedy", emerging as a distinct television genre.The show's theme song was performed by jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a hit. The show is also credited with making Willis a star while providing Shepherd with a critical success after a string of lackluster projects.

In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME." Introduction Edit Block The series revolved around cases investigated by the Blue Moon Detective Agency and its two partners, Madeline "Maddie" Hayes (Shepherd) and David Addison (Willis). The show, with a mix of mystery, sharp dialogue and sexual tension between its two leads, introduced Bruce Willis to the world and brought Cybill Shepherd back into the spotlight after a nearly decade-long absence. The characters were introduced in a two-hour pilot episode that preceded the series proper. The show's storyline begins with the reversal of fortune of Maddie Hayes, a former model who finds herself bankrupt after her accountant embezzles all of her liquid assets. She is left saddled with several failing businesses formerly maintained as tax write-offs, one of which is the City of Angels Detective Agency, helmed by the carefree David Addison. Between the pilot and the first one-hour episode, David persuades Maddie to keep the business and run it as a partnership. The agency is renamed Blue Moon Investigations because Maddie was most famous for being the spokesmodel for the (fictitious) Blue Moon shampoo company.

In many episodes she was recognized as "the Blue Moon shampoo girl," if not by name. In his audio commentary for the season-three DVD, creator Glenn Gordon Caron says that the inspiration for the series was a production of The Taming of the Shrew he saw in Central Park starring Meryl Streep and Raúl Juliá. The show would parody this Shakespeare play in the season-three episode Atomic Shakespeare. Cast and characters Edit Block Cybill Shepherd as Maddie Hayes: Maddie Hayes is a chic and smart former high-fashion model. Left bankrupt when her accountant embezzles all of her money, she is forced to make a living by running the detective agency she had previously owned as a tax write-off. Using her celebrity as a former model, she brings in clients and tries to bring some order to a business previously run without any discipline. By the time he had written 50 pages for the pilot to the show, Caron says he realized he was writing the part for Cybill Shepherd. After reading the script, she immediately realized this was a part she wanted to do and, during her first meeting with Caron and producer Jay Daniel, remarked that it was reminiscent of a “Hawksian” comedy.

The two had no idea what she was talking about, so she suggested they screen Twentieth Century, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, three of her favorites, to see how the overlapping dialogue was handled. A week before shooting of the pilot began, Caron, Shepherd, and Willis watched Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday. Bruce Willis as David Addison: David Addison is a fast-talking, fun-loving detective running the City of Angels Detective Agency. Faced with the prospect of being put out of business he convinces Maddie that they have always lost money because they were supposed to and talks her into rebranding the agency and going into business with him as her partner. Glenn Gordon Caron had to fight with ABC to put Willis in the lead role having already signed Shepherd for both the pilot and series. Caron claims he tested Willis about a third of the way through testing over 2,000 actors, knew "this was the guy" immediately, and had to fight through twice as many more acting tests and readings while arguing with ABC executives before receiving (initial) conditional authorization to cast Willis in the pilot.

ABC, according to Caron, did not feel that anyone viewing would think there could possibly be any "believable" sexual tension between Shepherd and Willis. Allyce Beasley as Agnes DiPesto: Agnes DiPesto is the extremely loyal and quirky receptionist for the Blue Moon Detective Agency who always answers the phone in rhyme. As problems arose with getting Willis and Shepherd on screen due to personal issues, the writers started to focus on the relationship between Agnes and fellow Blue Moon employee Herbert Viola. In the series finale, Agnes berates Maddie and David for not being able to figure out their nitwit relationship as the entire set is dismantled and states “if there’s a God in heaven he’ll spin Herbert and me off in our own series”. Curtis Armstrong as Herbert Viola: Herbert Viola started at Blue Moon as an employee from a temp agency. The producers brought Armstrong in based on his work in Revenge of the Nerds and Better Off Dead, hoping to expand the role of Agnes DiPesto by giving her a love interest, thereby taking some of the filming pressure off of Willis and Shepherd. As Herbert begins to shine in his duties, he gets promoted to working real cases as a junior detective.

Debuting in season three, he appeared in 23 of the series' 66 episodes. Jack Blessing as MacGillicudy: MacGillicudy is a Blue Moon employee, and became a foil for Herbert Viola and a rival for Agnes’s affections. Debuting in season three, he appeared in 17 of the series’ 66 episodes. Guest stars Edit Block Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd, Allyce Beasley, and Mark Harmon in the episode Maddie's Turn To Cry. In addition to the primary cast, several notable actors appeared either as guest stars or made cameos on the series. Recurring roles: Charles Rocket as Richard Addison, David's brother. Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber as Virginia and Alexander Hayes, Maddie's parents. Mark Harmon appeared near the end of Season 3 as Sam Crawford, Maddie's romantic interest and rival with David. Brooke Adams appeared in Season 4 as Terri Knowles, a single mother for whom David volunteered as a Lamaze partner in preparation for the birth of Maddie's child. Virginia Madsen appeared in Season 5 as Annie Charnock, Maddie's cousin and a short-term romantic interest for David.

One-time Roles: Liz Sheridan as Selma in the pilot episode. Mary Hart as herself in the pilot episode. Tim Robbins as a hitman in the Season 1 episode "Gunfight at the So-So Corral". Orson Welles as himself delivering the introduction in the Season 2 episode "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice". Dana Delany as Jillian Armstrong in the Season 2 episode "Knowing Her". David Patrick Kelly as McBride in the Season 2 episode "Somewhere Under the Rainbow". Dan Lauria as the Lieutenant in the Season 2 episode "Portrait of Maddie". Mark Linn-Baker as Phil West in the Season 2 episode "Atlas Belched". Richard Belzer as Leonard in the Season 2 episode "Twas the Episode Before Christmas". Whoopi Goldberg as Camille Brand in the Season 2 episode "Camille". Judd Nelson as a Police Officer in the Season 2 episode "Camille". Billy Barty as himself in the Season 2 episode "Camille". Paul Sorvino as David Addison Sr. in the Season 3 episode "The Son Also Rises". The Temptations as themselves in the Season 3 episode "Symphony in Knocked Flat".

Don King as himself in the Season 3 episode "Symphony in Knocked Flat". Rick Ducommun as one of David's friends in the Season 3 episode "Big Man On Mulberry Street". Sandahl Bergman appeared in a "dream" dance sequence in the Season 3 episode "Big Man On Mulberry Street". Colm Meaney as one of Katharina's suitors in the Season 3 episode "Atomic Shakespeare". Sterling Holloway as the Narrator in the Season 3 episode "Atomic Shakespeare". Lionel Stander as Max in the Season 3 episode "It's a Wonderful Job". Cheryl Tiegs as herself in the Season 3 episode "It's a Wonderful Job". Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele in the Season 3 episode "The Straight Poop". Peter Bogdanovich as himself in the Season 3 episode "The Straight Poop". Rona Barrett as herself in the Season 3 episode "The Straight Poop". Donna Dixon as Joan Tenowitz in the Season 3 episode "Blonde on Blonde". Sam McMurray as Moe Hyman in the Season 3 episode "Blonde on Blonde".

Robert Wuhl as the Nut in Holding Cell in the Season 3 episode "Blonde on Blonde". Jeff Jarvis as himself in the Season 3 episode "Sam & Dave". Randall 'Tex' Cobb as "Big Guy in Gas Station" in the Season 3 episode "Sam & Dave". Gary Cole as Alan McClafferty in the Season 3 episode "Maddie's Turn to Cry". William Hickey as Mr. Kendall in the Season 3 episode "To Heiress Human". Dr. Joyce Brothers as herself in the Season 4 episode "A Trip to the Moon". Ray Charles as himself in the Season 4 episode "A Trip to the Moon". Amanda Plummer as Jacqueline "Jackie" Wilbourne in the Season 4 episode "Take a Left at the Altar". Imogene Coca as Clara DiPesto in the Season 4 episode "Los Dos DiPestos". Michelle Johnson as Mrs. Hunziger in the Season 5 episode "Plastic Fantastic Lovers". Jennifer Tilly as Nurse Saundra in the Season 5 episode "Plastic Fantastic Lovers". Colleen Dewhurst as Betty Russell in the Season 5 episode "Take My Wife, For Example".

Rita Wilson as Carla in the Season 5 episode "Those Lips, Those Lies". Demi Moore, Bruce Willis's wife at the time, as the woman in the elevator in the Season 5 episode "When Girls Collide". Timothy Leary as minister Wynn Deaupayne in the Season 5 episode "Lunar Eclipse". Format innovations Edit Block Bruce Willis as Petruchio in the episode Atomic Shakespeare. The series was created by Glenn Gordon Caron, one of the producers of the similar Remington Steele, when he was approached by ABC executive Lewis H. Erlicht. Erlicht liked the work Caron had done on Taxi and Remington Steele and wanted a detective show featuring a major star in a leading role that would appeal to an upscale audience. Caron wanted to do a romance, to which Erlicht replied “I don’t care what it is as long as it’s a detective show”. The tone of the series was left up to the production staff, resulting in Moonlighting becoming one of the first successful TV "dramedies"— dramatic-comedy, a style of television and movies in which there is an equal or nearly equal balance of humor and serious content.

The show made use of fast-paced, overlapping dialogue between the two leads, harkening back to classic screwball comedy films such as those of director Howard Hawks. These innovative qualities resulted in its being nominated, for the first time in the 50-year history of the Directors Guild of America, for both Best Drama and Best Comedy in the same year (both in 1985 and 1986). Breaking the fourth wall Moonlighting frequently broke the fourth wall, with many episodes including dialogue which made direct references to the scriptwriters, the audience, the network, or the series itself. (For example, when a woman is trying to commit suicide by jumping into a bathtub with a television playing The Three Stooges, Addison says, "The Stooges? Are you nuts? The network'll never let you do that, lady!"). Variations of this technique had been used previously in television programs such as Burns and Allen (a sketch comedy series) and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (a sitcom which sometimes opened with the main character addressing an interior monologue to the audience), although Moonlighting was the first scripted television series to weave self-referential dialogue directly into the show's regular plot.

Unlike these earlier shows, Moonlighting sometimes broke the fourth wall in much more involved and complex ways. Cold opens sometimes featured Shepherd and Willis (in character as Maddie Hayes and David Addison), other actors, viewers or TV critics directly addressing the audience about the show's production itself. These cold opens were originally born out of desperation as a way to fill air time since the dialogue on the show was spoken so quickly and the producers needed something to fill the entire hour. In some other episodes, the plot suddenly transitioned into extended sequences which involved crew dismantling or changing the sets, characters wandering off the set into other parts of the studio, production crew stepping into the scene as a deus ex machina (e.g. a propmaster suddenly walking into the scene and taking the villain's gun away), or guest actors dropping character and referring to each other by their real names. However, other than in stand-alone openings, the main actors never stepped out of character during the episodes. Fantasy The series also embraced fantasy; in season two, the show aired "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", an episode that featured two lengthy and elaborately produced black and white dream sequences.

The episode was about a murder that had occurred in the 1940s that David and Maddie are told about by the inheritor of the then-famous nightclub where the murder had taken place. Maddie and David feud over the details of the crime, which involve a man and woman who were executed for the death of the woman's husband, with both claiming the other was the real killer and had implicated the other out of spite. After a fourteen minute set-up sequence, the show switched to two black and white dream sequences where the two dreamed their version of how the murder took place. The two sequences were filmed on different black and white film stock so that they would look like true period films. (On the commentary on the DVD it is said that they used black and white film instead of color so that the network wouldn't later use the color film). ABC was still displeased with the episode, however, and fearing fan reaction to a popular show being shown in black and white, demanded a disclaimer be made at the beginning of the episode to inform viewers of the "black and white" gimmick for the episode. The show's producers hired Orson Welles to deliver the introduction, which aired a few days after the actor's death.

Another famous fantasy episode was "Atomic Shakespeare", which featured the cast performing a variation of The Taming of the Shrew, with David in the role of Petruchio, Maddie as Katharina, Agnes as Bianca and Herbert as Lucentio. The episode featured Shakespearean costumes and mixed the Shakespearean plot with humorous anachronisms and variations on Moonlighting's own running gags—including David riding in as Petruchio on a horse with BMW logos embroidered on its saddle blanket and repeatedly launching into the wrong Shakespearean soliloquy until the rest of the cast corrects him on which play he's in, and the Blue Moon office itself serving as Petruchio and Katharina's estate. The characters perform the Shakespearean dialogue in iambic pentameter and the episode was wrapped by segments featuring a boy imagining the episode's proceedings because his mother forced him to do his Shakespeare homework instead of watching Moonlighting, which the mother described as "That show about two detectives? A man and a woman? And they argue all the time and all they really want to do is sleep together?

Sounds like trash to me!" Other In addition, the show mocked its connection to the popular Remington Steele series by having Pierce Brosnan hop networks and make a cameo appearance as Steele in one episode. The show also acknowledged Hart to Hart as an influence: in the episode "It's a Wonderful Job", based on the film It's a Wonderful Life, Maddie's guardian angel showed her an alternate reality in which Jonathan and Jennifer Hart from the earlier series had taken over Blue Moon's lease. Although Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers did not appear in the episode, Lionel Stander reprised his role as the Harts' assistant Max. Both Shepherd and Willis sang musical numbers over the course of the show. In "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", Shepherd performed both "Blue Moon" in Maddie's dream sequence and The Soft Winds' "I Told Ya I Love Ya, Now Get Out!" in David's, while in "Atomic Shakespeare", Willis sings The Young Rascals' "Good Lovin'". Willis also frequently broke into shorter snippets of Motown songs. "Good Lovin'", "Blue Moon" and "I Told Ya I Love Ya..." appeared on the Moonlighting Soundtrack.

The episode "Big Man on Mulberry Street" centers around a big production dance number set to the Billy Joel song of the same name which was in turn inspired by the show itself. The sequence was directed by veteran musical director Stanley Donen. Production Edit Block Cybill Shepherd in the episode The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice. Moonlighting was unique at the time for being one of only three shows, due to FCC regulations, to be owned and produced in-house by a broadcast network (NBC’s Punky Brewster and CBS’s Twilight Zone being the others). This allowed the network greater flexibility in budgeting the show since the “back-end potential” for profits was so much greater with not having to pay a licensing fee to the film studio or independent production company. As a result, ABC gave Caron a lot of control over production. Caron, however, was a perfectionist and viewed Moonlighting as the filming of a one hour movie every week, using techniques usually reserved for big budget films.

To capture the cinematic feel of the films of the 1940s, for example, he would prohibit the use of a zoom lens, opting instead to use more time-consuming moving master cameras that move back and forth on a track and require constant resetting of the lights. Diffusion disks were used to soften Cybill Shepherd’s features, and a special lens needed to be employed so that in a two shot, Maddie would be diffused and David would not. Much of the credit for this look and feel can be attributed to the hiring of Gerald Finnerman as the director of photography. Finnerman, a second generation cinematographer, was brought up in the old school of cinematography by working with his father, Perry Finnerman, and later as a camera operator for Harry Stradling on such films as My Fair Lady and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Finnerman would then go on to be the director of photography for the TV series Star Trek and was responsible for creating much of the mood in that show by employing black-and-white lighting techniques for color film. This background meshed perfectly with what Caron was trying to portray in the series and earned him an Emmy nomination for the black-and-white episode “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice”.

Hired for the show after the pilot was shot, Finnerman would become involved in virtually every aspect of the show including the scripts, lighting, set design, and even directing some of the later episodes. Typical scripts for an average one hour television show run 60 pages, but those for Moonlighting were nearly twice as long due to the fast talking overlapping dialogue of the main characters. While the average television show would take seven days to shoot, Moonlighting would take from 12–14 days to complete with episodes and dialogue frequently being written by Caron the same day they were shot. This attention to detail contributed to Moonlighting as being one of the most expensive television shows being produced at the time. Where most episodes would cost around $900,000 to produce, Moonlighting was running nearly double that. The season 2 episode "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" could have been filmed much more cheaply by being shot in color and then decolorized, but Caron insisted on the authentic look of black-and-white film which took 16 days to shoot bringing the cost of the episode to then unheard of sum of two million dollars.

Caron often defended his filming practices in the name of giving the audience what they wanted and producing a quality product. He used the following analogy to illustrate the point, "The thinking in television which makes no damn sense to me, is that a half hour of television costs X, and an hour of television costs Y, no matter what that television is, it strikes me as an insane hypothesis. The parallel is, you're hungry, whether you go to McDonald's or whether you go to '21,' it should cost the same; they both fill your stomach. It's nonsense." All of this attention to detail resulted in production delays and the show became notorious for airing reruns when new episodes had not been completed in time for broadcast. The first two seasons of Moonlighting focused almost entirely on the two main characters, having them appear in almost every scene. According to Cybill Shepherd, "I left home at 5 A.M. each day. Moonlighting scripts were close to a hundred pages, half again as long as the average one-hour television series.

Almost from the moment the cameras started rolling we were behind schedule, sometimes completing as few as sixteen episodes per season, and never achieving the standard twenty-two." Glenn Gordon Caron partly blamed Cybill Shepherd for production problems: Producer Jay Daniel talked about the difficulties between the costars in the later seasons: The delays became so great that even ABC mocked the lateness with an ad campaign showing network executives waiting impatiently for the arrival of new episodes at ABC's corporate headquarters. One episode featured television critic Jeff Jarvis in an introduction, sarcastically reminding viewers what was going on with the show's plot since it had been so long since the last new episode. The season three clipshow episode "The Straight Poop" also made fun of the episode delays by having Hollywood columnist Rona Barrett drop by the Blue Moon Detective Agency to figure out why David and Maddie couldn't get along, as the premise to set up the clips from earlier episodes. In the end, Rona convinced them to apologize to one another, and promised the viewers that there would be an all-new episode the following week. Shepherd's real-life pregnancy and a skiing accident in which Willis broke his clavicle further contributed to production delays.

To counter these problems, with the fourth season, the writers began to focus more of the show's attention on supporting cast members Agnes and Herbert, writing several episodes focusing on the two so that the show would be able to have episodes ready for airing. Ratings and decline Edit Block Moonlighting was a hit with TV audiences as well as with critics and industry insiders garnering 16 Emmy nominations in just its second season. That season saw Moonlighting tie for 20th place in the Nielsen ratings. In season three the show peaked in 9th place, then dropped off slightly in a tie for 12th in its 4th season. The show's ratings decline is popularly attributed to Episode #14 of Season 3, "I Am Curious… Maddie", which infamously had Maddie and David consummate their relationship after two and a half years of romantic tension. In commentaries on the third season DVD set, however, Caron stated that he didn't feel the event led to the show's decline, but that a number of other factors led to the series' decline and eventual cancellation. Much of that was attributed to the fact that in the fourth season Willis and Shepherd had little screen time together.

Jay Daniel explained that, "we had to do episodes where there was no Cybill. She was off having twins. Her scenes were shot early, early on and then you had to integrate them with scenes shot weeks later. You were locked into what those scenes were because of what had already been shot with Cybill." Bruce Willis was also making Die Hard during this period. When that movie became a box office success, a movie career beckoned and his desire to continue in a weekly series waned. In a series that depended on the chemistry between the two main stars, not having them together for the bulk of the fourth season hurt the ratings. The series lost Glenn Gordon Caron as executive producer and head writer when he left the show over difficulties with the production: "I don't think Cybill understood how hard the workload was going to be. A situation arose with her, and at a certain point it became clear that… umm… suffice it to say I wasn't there for the last year and a half." Shepherd recalled Caron left the show stating that it was either him or her, and he didn't think the network would choose him.

When Maddie returned to Los Angeles near the end of the fourth season, the writers tried to recreate the tension between Maddie and David by having Maddie spontaneously marry a man named Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan) within a few hours of meeting him on the train back to LA. When Shepherd read the script she strongly voiced her objection that her character would not do such a thing, but was overruled. The move failed to rekindle the sparks between the main characters or capture the interest of the audience, which led to an even further ratings decline. Cancellation Edit Block Neither of the principal stars was vested in the last season of the show. Bruce Willis, fresh from his Die Hard success, wanted to make movies. Cybill Shepherd, having just given birth to twins, had grown tired of the long, grueling production days and was ready for the series to end. In the 1988–89 TV season, the show's ratings declined precipitously.

The March to August 1988 Writers Guild of America strike canceled plans for the 1987–88 Moonlighting season finale to be filmed and aired on TV in 3-D in a deal with Coca-Cola (though Coca-Cola did a 3-D TV deal with NBC's broadcast of the halftime show of Super Bowl XXIII in January 1989 instead) and delayed the broadcast of the first new episode until December 6, 1988. The series went on hiatus during the February sweeps, and returned on Sunday evenings in the spring of 1989. Six more episodes aired before the series was canceled in May of that year. In keeping with the show's tradition of "breaking the fourth wall", the last episode (fittingly titled "Lunar Eclipse") featured Maddie and David returning from Agnes and Herbert's wedding to find the Blue Moon sets being taken away, and an ABC network executive waiting to tell them that the show had been canceled. The characters then raced through the studio lot in search of a television producer named Cy, as the world of Moonlighting was slowly dismantled.

When they found Cy, he was screening a print of "In 'n Outlaws", the episode of Moonlighting that had aired two weeks earlier. Once informed of the problem, Cy lectured David and Maddie on the perils of losing their audience and the fragility of romance. Cy was played by Dennis Dugan, the same actor who had played Walter Bishop in Maddie's marriage storyline — however, Dugan was also the director of the episode, so his acting credit was listed as "Walter Bishop". The final scene was a message stating that "Blue Moon Investigations ceased operations on May 14, 1989. The Anselmo Case was never solved… and remains a mystery to this day." As the show had not produced enough episodes to gain a syndication contract, following its original run it was not widely seen until its DVD release, although it occasionally appeared on cable channels (including Lifetime and Bravo in the US, and W in Canada) in the 1990s and 2000s. Bravo airings often featured new claymation promos with Maddie and David using original audio clips from the series.

The "Atomic Shakespeare" episode aired on Nick at Nite in 2005 as part of the network's 20th anniversary celebration. The 1985 ABC Tuesday night line-up was honored with reruns of Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains and Moonlighting, although "Atomic Shakespeare" was from the '86-'87 season. BBC initially carried the show in the UK, though it has been shown on CBS Drama since November 2009. Between 2005 and 2008 the show was frequently shown on the now defunct channel ABC1. Awards and nominations "Maddie And David In The Making", Audio Commentaries Parodies Edit Block Riptide, a once-popular detective series whose ratings had declined to the point of cancellation after airing against Moonlighting in the 1985–86 television season, aired an episode (the show's second-last) in 1986, in which that show's detectives acted as mentors to "Rosalind Grant" (Annette McCarthy) and "Cary Russell" (Richard Greene), the bickering stars of a television detective show pilot.

Although their names were an allusion to Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, the characters were written as parodies of Shepherd and Willis, even adopting some of their real mannerisms and clothing styles, and their dialogue contained many nods, both obvious and subtle, to Moonlighting's writing style. The episode was explicitly promoted by NBC (Riptide's network) as a Moonlighting parody, and was publicized as such widely enough that Riptide's producers felt obliged to clarify that they liked Moonlighting and intended the episode as an homage. An episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks did a parody called Dreamlighting, featuring Brittany as "Bratty Hayes" and Alvin as "David Alvinson". See also Watch Moonlighting Online Home › Moonlighting › Watch Moonlighting Online Watch Moonlighting Online Issue: * Submit Report Madelyn “Maddie” Hayes played by Sybill Shepherd is a former top model currently left bankrupt by her investment adviser who betrayed her and had run away with all her money. The only things she has left are her house, her charm, smart mind, her beauty and one failing business – “City of Angels Detective Agency”.

The head of the agency is a very carefree, relaxed detective David Addison Jr. played by none other than Bruce Willis. Desperate, the woman wants to close the agency and get as many money as she can from it, but David will do his best to convince her otherwise. In the end he makes her an offer to join the agency as the new boss. And this is just the beginning. Now, after changing the name of the agency in “Blue Moon Investigations” after a shampoo company that she used to be a spokesman of, Maddie is thrown into a completely changed style of life. Long are forgotten the catwalk and the photo-shoot sessions and here she is, solving murders, finding missing people, following cheating husbands, spying for the sake of safety and putting killers behind the bars. David’s attitude usually gets him into an aggressive contradiction with Maddie, which fires up both of them in a very delightful and humorous way. First Aired: March 1, 1985 Runtime: 60 minutes Moonlighting | Archive of American Television from the Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television U.S.

Detective Comedy/Drama Moonlighting, an hour-long episodic series which aired on ABC from 1985 to 1989, signaled the emergence of dramedy as a television genre. Although the series finished its first season in a ratings tie for 20th place, it rose to 9th place in 1986-87 and tied for 12th place the following season, (in which only 14 new episodes were made). The innovative qualities of the program, however, were marked by its nomination, for the first time in the 50-year history of the Directors Guild of America, for both Best Drama and Best Comedy. Produced by Glen Gordon Caron, Moonlighting featured high-fashion model, Maddie Hayes (played by real-life former high-fashion model Cybill Shepard), and fast-talking private eye David Addison (played by then-unknown Bruce Willis).

The series' story began after Maddie's business manager embezzled most of her fortune, leaving her with her house and the Blue Moon Detective Agency, designed by the wily accountant as nothing more than a tax write-off and consisting of detective David Addison and secretary Agnes Dipesto (played by Allyce Beasley). The romantic tension between David--the smart, slovenly, party-animal and womanizer, and Maddie--the beautiful, haute couture-attired, snobbish Maddie lasted for two seasons. After this point complications on and off the set led to a plot line in which Maddie juggled relationships with David and another suitor, briefly married a third man, had the marriage annulled, and suffered a miscarriage. The series' importance, however, lies not so much in its convoluted plots as in its unique and sustained fusion of elements characteristically associated with two distinct genres into the emergent genre, dramedy.

Moonlighting clearly exhibits the semantic features of television drama: serious subject matter dealing with incidents of sufficient magnitude that it arouses pity and fear; rounded, complex central characters who are neither thoroughly admirable nor despicable; textured lighting--both the hard telenoir and the diffused lighting accompanied by soft camera focus; multiple exterior and interior settings, single camera shooting on film. But the series combines the "serious" elements with the syntactic features of television comedy. These comedic features include a four-part narrative structure (consisting of the situation, complication, confusion, and resolution), the metatextual practices of verbal self-reflexivity, musical self-reflexivity, and intertextuality, repetition (i.e., the doubling, tripling, and compounding of the same action or incident until the repetition itself becomes humorous), witty repartee, hyperbolic coincidence, and a governing benevolent moral principle within which the violent, confused, often ironic dramas of good and evil, seriousness and silliness were played out. A full appreciation of the sophistication of Moonlighting required a level of cultural literacy (both popular and classic) rarely required by prime time television series, which was one reason the series drew accolades from critics early on.

Titles of its episodes intertextually referenced the narrative premises as well as titles, authors, and even visual techniques of films, novels, dramas, poems, and plays from the 16th century through the present (e. g., "It's a Wonderful Job," "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice," "Atlas Belched," "Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde," "Twas the Episode Before Christmas," and "The Lady in the Iron Mask"). Another episode titled "Atomic Shakespeare" provided a feminist version of "The Taming of the Shrew" performed, except for the bookend scenes, entirely in iambic pentameter. Additionally, in many episodes, protagonists Maddie and David break the theatrical "fourth wall" convention with self-reflexive references to themselves as actors in a television program or to the commercial nature of the television medium. Such metatextual practices are techniques of defamiliarization which, according to certain formalist critical theories, epitomize the experience and purpose of art; they jar viewers out of the complacent, narcotizing pleasure of familiar forms and invite them to question and appreciate the artistic possibilities and limitations of generic forms.

Moonlighting's use of these metatextual practices signifies its recognition of the traditions that have shaped it and its self-conscious comments on its departure from those traditions--characteristics typically attributed to works regarded as highly artistic. The series' artistry in fusing the genre features of drama and comedy in such a way that it was both popular and critically acclaimed paved the way for such other innovative dramedic ventures as Frank's Place, Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and Northern Exposure. Moonlighting also led a number of critics to declare that with Moonlighting American television had finally come of age as an art form. -Leah R. Vande Berg CAST Maddie Hayes....................................... Cybill Shepherd David Addison............................................ Bruce Willis Agnes Dipesto......................................... Alice Beasley Herbert Viola (1986-1989)..................... Curtis Armstrong Virginia Hayes (1987-1988)..................... Eva Marie Saint Alex Hayes (1987-1988).......................... Robert Webber MacGilicuddy (1988-1989).........................

Jack Blessing PRODUCERS Glenn Gordon Caron, Jay Daniel PROGRAMMING HISTORY 65 Episodes ABC March 1985 Sunday 9:00-11:00 March 1985-April 1985 Tuesday 10:00-11:00 April 1985-September 1988 Tuesday 9:00-10:00 December 1988-February 1989 Tuesday 9:00-10:00 April 1989-May 1989 Sunday 8:00-9:00 FURTHER READING Joyrich, Lynne. "Tube Tied: Reproductive Politics and Moonlighting." In, Naremore, James, and Patrick Brantlinger, editors. Modernity and Mass Culture. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1991. Oruch, Jack. "Shakespeare for the Millions: 'Kiss Me, Petruchio.'" Shakespeare on Film Newsletter (Burlington, Vermont), 1987. Radner, Hilary.

"Quality Television and Feminine Narcissism: The Shrew and the Covergirl." Genders (Boulder, Colorado), July 1990. Williams, J. P. "The Mystique of Moonlighting: 'When You Care Enough to Watch the Very Best.'" Journal of Popular Film and Television (Bowling Green, Ohio), Fall 1988. Who Talked About This Show

Question: What was the name of the detective agency in Moonlighting
Answer: Blue Moon